Tuesday, February 28, 2017

A maszk - The mask - マスク

Na persze most nem a méltán híres filmről lesz szó Jim Carrey-vel (pedig akár lehetne is, mivel jó film :D). Helyette megint jöjjön egy olyan szokás, ami itt a világ legtermészetesebb dolga, a határ túloldalán meg még csak nem is hallottak róla. Ez pedig nem más, mint a sebészmaszk viselete a hétköznapokban...Of course it's not gonna be about the world-famous movie with Jim Carrey (although it could be, since it's a really good movie :D). Instead, I'll talk about another custom that is very commonplace here in Japan, but is completely unheard of on the other side of the borders. And yes, that is none other than wearing surgical masks in your everyday life...

For someone untrained in the Way of the Japanese, seeing a lot of people wearing surgical masks all day (especially at this time of the year) might seem kinda weird at first sight. When I say all day, I mean things like when they are walking on the street, when they are at work or on the public transport. Okay, most likely it'll still be weird even after a few weeks... :D By the way, I'm now at the stage where I understand the main concept, I even think it's a good idea, but it looks like the people have taken this a step too far, which makes this whole thing very funny for me. It looks something like this (okay, maybe this picture is a bit of an exaggeration, but you'll get the main idea):日本に詳しくない人なら（まぁ、日本語のバージョンが読めるならそんなはずはないけど :D）、大勢の人が一日中マスクをかけるのが結構珍しく見えるはずだね。まぁ、その一日中は、本当に一日中だね：道を歩くときでも、事務所で仕事するときでも、電車に乗るときでも、かけてるね。えぇ、まぁ、多分数週間見ても珍しいと思う… :D今の私なら、基本の考えを理解して、同意もするけど、結局こっちの人たちがその考えをやりすぎて、すっごく面白いと思う。大体こうなるね（まぁ、この写真は極端かも知れないが、私の目には結構こんな感じだよ）：

The whole thing started from the fact that everyone here is terrified about catching a cold, or flu, or some similar illness. And I kinda understand them, because these illnesses can spread very quickly in the big cities where a lot of people live, and then it takes quite some time to get back to normal ifyou happen to catch one of them. So, in order to lower the chances of spreading the viruses, if someone's nose is running, or has a sore throat, or similar, they'll put on a mask, so that even if they sneeze or something, the mask will get in the way of the erm. germs. On another note, blowing your nose in the presence of other people is not a common thing here, so the mask will provide some cover for such issues too... :D Oh, and it's not like there's some law or something that forces the people to put on these masks. It's just that it's common sense to try not to fuck up other people's lives, if possible. (Weird, isn't it?... :D)

And now comes the "step too far" part: (based on my personal opinion) out of all the people who wear masks on the streets, about 10% falls into the above group. The others are completely healthy, they just fear catching a cold so much, that they put on a mask in hopes of getting some protection from it. However, I think it's absolutely useless in this case. But anyway, it just provides me another thing I can laugh at every day. :D

And thanks to this "step too far", there's a quite lively industry for masks: they are sold in basically every color on the RGB scale (the most common are the white and pink ones though). But that's not all of it yet, because there are masks to be worn during sleeping(!). To be honest, I don't really understand the concept behind this. You see, even if people don't want to infect their pillows (or the other way around), why do they need a different kind of mask? Why can't they use a simple one that they wear all day long anyway? Of course, a day may come when I get enlightened... In any case, don't get too surprised if I go home wearing a mask (even just for the fun of it)... :D

Many of you have asked me to write about Japan, how's my life here, what's happening to me, etc. That's why I've created this blog, here I'll try to share with all of you every important, unimportant, interesting and boring things that I see / hear / experience here.